Shreds
by prodigale
Summary: A child cannot exist when the world has no need for one. — RYOMA .


shreds;

RYOMA . . .

Drabble .

RYOMA - A child cannot exist when the world has no need for one . – ryoma ficlet.

--

Ryoma is thirteen when he returns home with a gift for his mother. There is no occasion to go with it – it isn't Mother's Day, nor her birthday. His only excuse is that he happened to pass buy some beautiful flowers on the streets, and decides to pick them for her. It is unusual for the usual stoic boy, but it is also the year when he decides to change his usually stoic character for the better – for the sake of the people around him. . .

His mother responds simply by looking up from washing the kitchen utensils, and asking with a quizzical eyebrow arched perfectly to that familiar angle he remembers, "Did you lose a bet with your otto-san, Ryoma?"

Ryoma never brings back anymore presents again – Mother's Day or not.

-

Ryoma loves his sempais, just a little less than tennis. Not a boy his age capable of expressing himself well ; he truly wants to tell them they'll be missed when they graduate – he resorts to penning haikus for each of them on their last day attending tennis practice. Surreptitiously the evening before, he slips the papers into their lockers, and scurries back home, a furtive, but unmistakably hopeful smile on his face when he wonders what they'll do when they find out his unusually affectionate gifts.

The next day, he walks by all of them huddled together comparing their haikus ---

But not close enough for them to see him approach.

He runs away before they do so – the moment he hears them roaring with boisterious laughter (and looks of disbelief and . . . _disgust? _) when they say something along the lines of, "Kami-sama, Ryoma can _write _haiku? Did he lose a bet with someone in school or something?"

The day his sempais graduate, Ryoma says nothing of the haikus (they don't bring it up either: they are convinced about their connjecture still for their kohai to do such. . . uncharacteristic things) – and merely gives them all a small smirk on his face that hopefully conveys the little note that he just _might _miss them.

-

Ryoma is fifteen, when he realizes he is head over heels with the Sakuno girl – pig tails or not.

He spends the whole night discussing the whys and hows of his feelings, manipulates his words eliciting from his mouth so he rehearses his confession over and over again: in front of the mirror, very much like a performing guppy with opened lips and scrunched nose. He thinks he looks like the fool, but when he fingers his chest – his heart is pumping and racing, and his face is so red, he thinks he see stars. He's breathless.

And when Kachiro calls up to check on him and his lovesick status (the boy has figured it out just as much), Ryoma's only glad to share his feelings with a close friend who's been there for quite some time.

He stares himself in the mirror when he washes up in the morning the next day, and lets out a breath that comes out as a whoosh.

So this is _love – _and he doesn't want to trade this feeling for anything else.

When he braces himself to poke the girl in front of him in the classroom to turn around, he tries to make it just as he has done it a million times. Pull her pig tails, tease her, and then just when she's indulging you in your sadonic sense of humor at poking fun of her, _confess. _It's _easy. _

He blurts it out suddenly.

_You mean more than a friend to me. _

Behind, Kachiro and classmates cheer his friend on silently.

It is an awkward moment ---

When Sakura finally raises an eyebrow, (usually shy and easily flustered, she shows no signs of turning red) she asks one question – the same that breaks him altogether:

"Did you lose a bet with Horio-san or something?"

Ryoma sinks back in his chair, allows himself to stun for three seconds most, before a smile (barely) curves his lips.

One that doesn't even touches his eyes.

"Yes, I did, _Ryuuzaki._"

-

The next morning, and the next, and the next –

Ryoma invests everything – heart and soul – into tennis.

He spends hours and hours on the tennis courts. When he isn't involved in practice, he calculates it perfectly (like he's all planned it out from Monday to Sunday) so that he's either hitting his books, or trading tennis moves and tips with rivals and opponents. And even when he's no choice but to socially _converse, _he's made it so that he even has a manual for the whys and wherefores of interaction – conversations boiled down to cracking sarcastic jokes, to saying things that aren't really what he means; blindly quoted from books he browses through occasionally in the library. He plans every minute; every hour of his life so that he wastes nothing away on building ties, on closing _distances. _

Once, he used to be known as the tennis prodigy who walks everywhere unintentionally with a wristband on his hand. It is _there _still_ – _along with an additional gadget clinging beseechingly around his head – a set of white headphones that is his tool for shutting everything out.

He hears _nothing, _touches _nothing, _and masters the art of closing his eyes when walking around – very much like Fuji-sempai.

-

When he is sixteen, he becomes the first Japanese to win the Grand Slam title his age.

Interviewed, something long hidden, instinctive bubbles within him. He wants to say "thank you" – to his fans, to those who support him out there in the stands, and on TV.

Then he remembers everything:

He shuffles on his feet, slides his hands into his pockets, and slips his headphones back so he plugs out everything.

Metal music blasts heavily.

Thank you – belongs to the old, _nice _Ryoma Echizen.

The one people had _no _need for. They didn't see him when he was innocent, nice – an ordinary boy craving for gratitude, for someone to look him in the eye sincerely and say "thank you" -- without questioning if he has lost his sanity for being so uncharacteristic.

Being _nice _to people is what a child might do in order to feel happy that he's made someone's day.

". . . I don't need people, much less, _fans._" He (forces himself to) growls to the cameras and stalks off.

And he's not a child anymore.

. . . They don't need to know.

They haven't seen him as one at any point of time anyway .

**Owari **


End file.
